1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to information capture and, in particular, to estimating rainfall precipitation amounts by applying computer vision in cameras.
2. Description of the Related Art
The influence of weather and climatic events are extremely important in virtually all contexts and businesses. All sorts of companies, no matter what they produce, can be affected somehow by weather events. Agriculture, the stock market, insurance, energy generation and distribution, road traffic, airports (flight control, ground operations, and logistics), city operations on the imminence of natural disasters, among many other situations and contexts, would be affected by weather events, but mainly in “extreme weather events”. Due to these reasons, cities, companies and weather agencies must be well instrumented in such a way they could predict, act, operate, implement recovery plans, and so on.
Nowadays, rain gauges are very important devices that allow better decision making for all sorts of cities operations and businesses. It is somewhat common to find rain gauges or full weather stations installed in some places, but never in a sufficient amount to cover the entire city (spatially-wise), irrespective of risky areas. In addition to that, the coverage of these sensors is far from adequate to be assimilated by numerical models (as initial and boundary conditions). These numerical models can be weather forecast models, flood predictions, air quality analysis and forecast, drought forecast and analysis, besides other purposes.